Comments (10)

I try to reduce my land fill waste as much as possible. One problem area is my house cat’s used litter. I live in a first floor apartment on a very busy highway with no garden, hence the ‘house’ cat. I do have an allotment but don’t really fancy putting used litter in the compost. As a student any solution needs to be low cost as well as low impact.

@Dawn: Hi Dawn, this is a problem for many. Instead of using cat litter, you could use shredded newspaper for the reuse idea – this will save you money too, but you still need to dispose of it.

If you have no garden to compost (a friend of ours has a compost section purely for the cat litter, so it never gets used or mixed in with the other compost) then I can’t think of a solution apart from toilet training your cat; which has been done 😉

@renzi renzo: Hello Renzi, I have understood that you are interested in more information about recycling household waste, but I’m not sure I understood the rest of your message. I know someone who is fluent in Italian and English, so I will ask her to help and get back to you!

Hello!
Today I saw a report about you in the televison and I was or better I´m STILL fascinated.
I never thought that it could be that “easy”, but now I´m motivated to live like your family.
I live in Austria so I hope I find a shop (with plastic who is recyclbale) like in your country ^.^ but I´ll try my best and I won´t give up.
Thanks for the homepage it´s a great help.
Best Wishes

I think it’s pretty little what I do, but I collect old jam-glasses and old candles. Then I make the candle-wax get liquid and put it into the jam-glasses. The only new thing in it is the wick (?) (wich can be bought everywhere)

It’s fun to do this, because you can get great colours, by mixing different waxes, but as I said: That won’t save earth.

@ Dawn This is my main source of waste too – every Sunday, 2 carrier bags worth of cat litter into the bin (with a couple of smaller bags of solids through the week)…

I’ve found things online that say, if you use a compostable litter, you can have a seperate compost bin for cat litter and one for other house-hold waste (and although household waste can go in the catlitter one, it’s best to keep the litter out of the household one).

I’m hoping to swap to Bio-Catolet ( http://www.biocatolet.co.uk/site/ ) as it’s had a lot of good reviews, or possibly a wood-based litter, once I’ve made a second compost bin (trying to find a source of second-hand wooden pallets at the minute). From what I understand, it’s generally recommended to ensure you’re not using chemical de-wormers on your cat (so they don’t kill the worms in the compost) and to use it on things like fruit bushes/flowers, rather than root-veg, so that the actual produce doesn’t come in direct contact with the compost… Though I don’t really understand why, because it’s more than likely that the cats will see my freshly dug rows for the root veg (once I have a veg garden next year) and go there anyway! I know they’ve been using my potato tubs this year, but it doesn’t really bother me as all of the root veg gets washed and scrubbed before eating anyway!

Another option is the litter kwitter:http://www.litterkwitter.com/en/index.php
Not something I fancy trying when we have one elderly (and rather large) cat that struggles to jump on the sofa… The queue for the bathroom can be long enough with just me and my partner after the loo, never mind 4 others! 🙂

For the more extreme composters, there’s:http://humanurehandbook.com/
Though I don’t think it’s something I’ll be trying, it has further information on ensuring that any poop composted is usable. 🙂